Culture Shock
“It’s kind of progressive, some of the stuff is more progressive than Mania, yet very groovy, some of the stuff like Gravity X.”
"Yeah, I guess it's a bit weird,” Truckfighters axeman Niklas Källgren – he's happy to simply go by 'Dango' in the context of the band – says, chuckling over the incongruity of three dudes from Örebro, Sweden taking up a genre populated by bleary-eyed Southern Californian cowboys.
“Before we started Truckfighters, I hadn't heard of bands like Fu Manchu or Kyuss, any of the music that was coming out of that scene. But a guy I knew at the time was really into a lot of that mid-'90s desert rock. He was basically listening to it all the time, and it really started to rub off on me. Because we were jamming together at the time and playing with that guy went on to become a very early incarnation of Truckfighters, so at the time when we started the band we were all just listening to a lot of that. A lot of people do say things to us about how it's weird that we're not playing black metal or whatever else is going on in Sweden at the moment. But obviously that's not our style, and I guess we don't really care if we confuse some people,” the affable guitarist admits.
Though Dango doesn't mind confounding the odd music listener, and the band's sound – which mixes '90s desert rock with '70s stadium rock, obscure prog influences with an early '00s garage jam band sensibility – escapes neat classification – there have been attempts by Truckfighters to explain what they're about, notably, a 2011 'fuzzomentary', aptly titled Truckfighters, which sort of helped explain things and introduced their name to a world of unknowing rock'n'rollers thanks to the help of one modern rock luminary.
“The problem for all underground bands is to get people to hear and know about you as there is no marketing budget or anything like that. It's easier when you're able to put stuff out through the Internet, but it also helps when you've got someone like Josh Homme saying that you're 'the best band that ever existed'. That's obviously going to turn heads, and then give you that chance to show a lot more people what you're about.”
Don't miss a beat with our FREE daily newsletter
Even with that chance to show the world what these Swedish fuzz monsters are about though, it seems, with Truckfighters nothing's going to be entirely clear cut. Capturing the band while recording their 2009 album, Mania, the film showed members dealing with day jobs and real-life responsibilities, and then interspersing the footage with psychedelic animations and visuals. “Some people expected it would be more concert footage, but it's not a music film in that way. It's more a documentary than a music movie – it's about how the band lives.”
The trio are touring Australia for the first time – Dango promises there's going to be plenty of jamming when Truckfighters get onstage – and are very close to having album number four out for public consumption. “We're about ninety per cent finished recording a new album, and because the three of us really worked together on this one, it's going to be really well-thought.” Apologising for the new record's delay, the band switched drummers and as Dango correctly points out, “to change one third of the band is a big thing. It sounds a bit like the old stuff. If you mix together the three albums we made, then you'll have the new album,” Dango says, laughing. “It's kind of progressive, some of the stuff is more progressive than Mania, yet very groovy, some of the stuff like Gravity X.”
Truckfighters will be playing the following dates:
More From Our Network
